


Immolated

by mrkinch



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dark!Charles, M/M, Off-Screen Major Character Death, how Charles lost the moral high ground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2630153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkinch/pseuds/mrkinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loss, guilt, and failure can change a man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immolated

It took a young Charles, always precocious and suddenly telepathic, agonizing months to wrest his own thoughts out of the world's torrent so he no longer felt he would burst from the flood. Master in his own head at last, he made a game of examining other minds, cataloguing the ways they were _not him_. Fanciful, lurid, banal, their thoughts were _not his thoughts_ , and he took comfort in the clear separation between _Charles_ and the rest of humanity. Encountering Erik only increased his delight in the vast differences between minds, in their structure as in their content and tenor.

But Erik is dead, for which Charles blames only himself, and a grieving, tormented telepath is not comforted by difference or entertained by observation. He finds distraction only in action, and the mind is where he can act with the most devastating, satisfying effect.

Though not his own mind. Charles had discovered that at once, and in incandescent fury poured his unfocused anguish outward, without a thought for those in its path. The horrifying results rebounded upon him instantly. Returning waves of sorrow and despair made his own emotional state clearer to him than he had ever wanted it to be. Yet it was infinitely worse for the psyches he so carelessly violated, drowning as they were in confusion at the incomprehensible invasion. Charles did not know he could feel guilt more overwhelming than that which first tipped him over the ethical precipice he had acknowledged with detachment since childhood, and brought matters to this pass. But he could. Mind clouded and slow, he tried frantically through the miasma of pain and fear to counter the ravages of his own broadcast despair. He lost track of time, struggling for hours, years, a lifetime, he could not have said how long, to reverse the damage. The limits of his success were humbling.

Once such failure would have made Charles recoil from further manipulation, but he has fallen from the heights and it is far too late for that. When his thoughts finally clear he is consumed by self-hatred and, with nothing left to burn, turns cold and focused. Minds are puzzles for his experiments. Knowing he can do incalculable damage, he sets to work in meticulous increments, identifying what is absolutely necessary to achieve a precise result. With a twist here and a bit of pressure there he learns to create anything he wants. Except Erik.

**Author's Note:**

> substantially revised, with [Stewardess](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stewardess/pseuds/stewardess)'s always invaluable help, from [my response](http://fan-flashworks.dreamwidth.org/331191.html) to "puzzle" at [fan_flashworks](http://fan-flashworks.dreamwidth.org/).


End file.
